Yet at the time, at the end of a long day, Byrnes also remarked to one of his aides, “Now, partner, let’s not get too excited on this vice-president business. I know that man [FDR] more than anybody else.”
Asked by two or three of his staff who were gathered about his desk what he thought of Harry Truman, Roosevelt said he didn’t know much about him. But Henry J. Kaiser, the famous shipbuilder, he said, was somebody else “we have got up our sleeve.”
Having completed a cross-country survey at Roosevelt’s request, Ed Flynn told him that opposition to Wallace was greater even than anyone supposed. Both Flynn and Roosevelt knew the election in the fall would be close, that Roosevelt was by no means a certain winner. Wallace on the ticket, Flynn warned, could mean the loss of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and California, which was undoubtedly an exaggeration. The problem was to find someone who would hurt Roosevelt’s chances least. So together, according to Flynn’s subsequent account, the two of them ran down the list, weighing the negative sides of all the other candidates.
Byrnes was the strongest choice, Flynn agreed, but Byrnes, who had been raised a Catholic, had left the Church when he married, to become an Episcopalian, and in Flynn’s view the Catholics “wouldn’t stand for that.” Organized labor had no enthusiasm for Byrnes since he had opposed sit-down strikes in wartime. But far more serious to Flynn was Byrnes’s southern background and recorded positions on racial issues. This was the crucial flaw. In 1938, Byrnes had been in the forefront of those southern senators fighting against a proposed federal anti-lynching law, and in a speech on the Senate floor he had turned much of his fire on Walter White, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “The Negro has not only come into the Democratic Party,” Byrnes had said, “but the Negro has come into control of the Democratic Party.” Then, pointing to the gallery where White was sitting, Byrnes exclaimed, “If Walter White…should consent to have this bill laid aside, its advocates would desert it as quickly as football players unscramble when the whistle of the referee is heard.”
When asked who he thought should run with Roosevelt, Byrnes usually mentioned Truman, Rayburn, and Henry J. Kaiser.
Sam Rayburn was a good man, Flynn and Roosevelt agreed, but Rayburn was from Texas, another southerner, and so “couldn’t be considered.” When they went through the list of the entire Senate, only one fitted the picture, Harry Truman. As Flynn wrote:
His record as head of the Senate Committee…was excellent, his labor votes in the Senate were good; on the other hand he seemed to represent to some degree the conservatives in the party, he came from a border state, and he had never made any “racial” remarks. He just dropped into the slot.
Flynn left the White House convinced he had an agreement, that Roosevelt saw Truman as the one who would do the ticket the least harm. This was not exactly a rousing endorsement for the Senator from Missouri, but it was what Flynn had wanted to hear, which is probably the main reason Roosevelt, given his manner of operation, sent him on his way with that impression.
About this same time, Roosevelt asked a favor of Mrs. Anna Rosenberg, a member of the War Mobilization Advisory Board, whose office, like that of Byrnes, was in the East Wing. Mrs. Rosenberg had become a favorite of the President’s. A highly attractive woman, she dressed smartly, wore expensive perfume, and lent an air of femininity to the White House that he greatly welcomed. In contrast to Mrs. Roosevelt, she also appreciated good food and would on occasion smuggle in jars of caviar to the President, sometimes also baskets of paprika chicken cooked by her Hungarian mother, which she and Roosevelt would happily devour together in his office in secret, “like naughty children,” she would remember. Roosevelt told her now that Byrnes was the best man, but asked her to go tell Byrnes he was not to be the vice-presidential choice, because of the Negro vote. Mrs. Rosenberg, who admired Byrnes greatly and wanted him on the ticket, said she couldn’t do that. If the President wanted Byrnes to know he had no chance, then the President would have to tell him himself, she said. But Roosevelt never did, never could, as she knew.
Truman was trying to clear up his work and get away for a few days in Missouri before the convention opened in Chicago on July 19. With so little time remaining, gossip over the vice-presidential question had become intense. To any and all who asked if he was interested in the nomination, Truman said no—“no, no, no.” The whole matter was getting on his nerves. He had not seen the President. It had been more than a year since he had seen the President. Nor would he make any effort to do so now.
“I don’t want to be Vice President,” he told William Helm as they were rushing along a hall in the Senate Office Building, and, as Helm wrote later, anyone who saw the look on his face would have known he meant it.
The number of other Democrats in the Senate reputedly in the running had grown to such a list, reporters were joking, that it was easier to tally those who were not candidates. On July 6, to judge by corridor gossip, Wallace had the nomination sewed up. On July 7, the word from “informed sources” was that the President wanted Wallace but he also wanted three or four “acceptable” names held in reserve, should the convention refuse to “swallow Henry.” In that case Barkley was first choice. On July 9, it was noted that Senator Truman, by continuing to do battle with the War Production Board and the armed services, was killing whatever chance he might have had.
“The Vice President simply presides over the Senate and sits around hoping for a funeral,” Truman explained to a friend. “It is a very high office which consists entirely of honor and I don’t have any ambition to hold an office like that.”
Max Lowenthal and Les Biffle were after him to run for Vice President. “The Madam doesn’t want me to do it,” he told Lowenthal. To Margaret he wrote, “It is funny how some people would give a fortune to be as close as I am to it and I don’t want it.” Then, making it unmistakable that his thoughts, too, were on the obvious mortality of Franklin Roosevelt, not to say his own advancing years, he added, “1600 Pennsylvania is a nice address but I’d rather not move in through the back door—or any other door at sixty.”
The letter was written on July 9, just as he started the long drive home alone to Missouri.
On Monday, July 10, after an all-night flight from Seattle, an exhausted Vice President of the United States arrived in Washington at the end of a 51-day, 27,000-mile mission to China, and at 4:30 that afternoon he met with the President to report on what he had seen. Roosevelt was cordial as always. For a long while they talked about China and Wallace’s venture to Outer Mongolia, where no American had set foot in seventeen years. (Wallace had brought Roosevelt some Mongolian stamps for his collection.) As Wallace recorded in his diary, it was Roosevelt who at last “opened up on politics saying that when I went out I should say that no politics were discussed.”
Roosevelt assured Wallace that he was his choice as running mate and that he intended the fourth term to be “really progressive.” He talked of the professional politicians who thought Wallace might mean a loss of 2 or 3 million votes (figures Ed Flynn had supplied). “Mr. President,” Wallace interjected, “if you can find anyone who will add more strength to the ticket than I, by all means take him.” Roosevelt warned Wallace of the ordeal he might face at Chicago trying to get the vice-presidential nomination and expressed concern about the pain this could mean for Wallace’s family. “Think of the catcalls and jeers and the definiteness of rejection,” Roosevelt remarked. Wallace said he was not worried about his family.
The next day, Tuesday, July 11, the President announced formally that he was running for another term. (Young Allen Drury wrote that he would never forget the look on the faces of Democratic senators when the news reached the Hill. “It was as though the sun had burst from the clouds and glory surrounded the world. Relief, and I mean relief, was written on every face. The meal ticket was still the meal ticket and all was well with the party.”) At lunch that day, July 11, Hopkins again asked Roosevelt who he thought woul
d make the best President, Byrnes or William O. Douglas. “Jimmy Byrnes,” Roosevelt said, “because he knows more about government than anybody around.” Hopkins asked who the President thought would win the nomination if the convention were left free to decide. “Byrnes,” Roosevelt said again.
Then that night, following dinner, in the President’s blue Oval Study on the second floor of the White House, the full anti-Wallace coalition—Flynn, Hannegan, Walker, Allen, Pauley, plus one more exceptionally influential “practical” politician, Mayor Ed Kelly of Chicago—gathered with the President for what they were to regard as the decisive meeting.
Because of the muggy heat, everyone was in shirtsleeves. Drinks were passed, and again the full list of vice-presidential possibilities was taken up one by one. Again Byrnes and Rayburn were rejected. Now, for the first time, Barkley, too, was ruled out, and by Roosevelt, because Barkley was too old. Like Byrnes, Barkley was sixty-six, which made him Roosevelt’s senior by only four years, but the Republicans at their convention in Chicago had just nominated for President Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, who was all of forty-two, the age Roosevelt’s Republican cousin Theodore had been when he took office, and so age could very likely be an issue in the campaign.
Roosevelt thought a young man was needed on the Democratic ticket, and to the surprise of the others, he proposed William O. Douglas, an idea none of them had ever seriously entertained. Douglas, he said, was youthful (he was forty-six), dynamic, a good liberal, and he had a kind of Boy Scout quality that would appeal to voters. Besides, Roosevelt thought, Douglas played an interesting game of poker.
But the idea fell flat. No one wanted Douglas any more than Wallace.
Again the talk turned to Harry Truman, Roosevelt contributing little to the conversation except to observe that he had set Truman up in his committee (which was not so) and thought he was doing a commendable job. Truman was able and loyal to the administration, Roosevelt agreed, and “wise to the way of politics.” Reportedly, the question of Truman’s association with the Pendergast machine was “thoroughly discussed” and dismissed as irrelevant.
One point only troubled the President-Truman’s age. He was not sure, Roosevelt said, but he thought Truman was nearly sixty. Hannegan, who knew Truman was already sixty, tried to change the subject, but Roosevelt sent for a Congressional Directory and the conversation continued. When the Directory arrived, Ed Pauley quietly took it and said no more.
As to which candidate might be best suited and prepared for the burdens and responsibilities of the presidency, there appears to have been little or no discussion. Apparently, only Roosevelt touched on the subject, saying again that, all in all, Jimmy Byrnes was the best-qualified man.
It would also be remembered how tired and listless the President was all through the stifling, hot evening. Frank Walker commented later that he had never known Roosevelt to stand so willingly on the sidelines “and let others carry the ball.”
Exhausted he was, and preoccupied by the war. Since the Allied landings at Normandy on June 6, the Germans had launched their first V-1 “buzz bombs,” Hitler’s terrifying Vergeltungswaffe, the vengeance weapon, against London. In the Pacific, the American assault on the island of Saipan had been met with Japanese resistance as fierce as any since the fighting began. Just the week before, on the night of July 6, three thousand Japanese had hurled themselves against the 27th Division in one mass banzai charge, all to be killed. No one, and least of all Roosevelt, expected the final stages of the war to become anything but more and more costly.
At last, turning to Hannegan, Roosevelt said, “Bob, I think you and everyone else here want Truman.”
Roosevelt had not said yet whether he himself wanted Truman, but at this point, Ed Pauley, still holding the Congressional Directory, rose and suggested they break up, then hurried everybody out of the room before Roosevelt had a chance to say anything more. Downstairs, as they were about to leave, Hannegan decided to go back up and get something in writing. By several accounts he returned with a note that Roosevelt had scrawled on an envelope: “Bob, I think Truman is the right man, FDR.” But an offhand, personal note was hardly conclusive, and as George Allen observed in understatement, “Roosevelt was still free to change his mind….”
A day or so later, writing in his diary, Harold Ickes, the Secretary of Interior, recorded that in a conversation with the President about the vice-presidential issue, little had been said about Senator Truman. “I gathered that he felt, as I do,” wrote Ickes, “that Truman might do but that he might raise a political-boss issue that would be especially welcomed by Dewey whose rise to political prominence has been due to fighting political bosses.”
It was a pattern. No matter how many talked to Roosevelt on the subject, each and all came away feeling he thought just as they did. For the moment anyway.
At first chance the morning of Wednesday, July 12, Hannegan went to see Henry Wallace at his apartment at the Wardman Park—a mission undertaken, according to Hannegan’s later account, at the request of the President. He told Wallace he would be a detriment to the ticket and must therefore withdraw. Wallace said they might as well understand one another. He was not withdrawing as long as the President preferred him.
On Thursday, the 13th, Wallace met for lunch with Roosevelt, who reported the meeting of the night of the 11th in some detail, explaining the preference of the professional politicians for Truman as “the only one who had no enemies and might add a little independent strength to the ticket.” Wallace showed him a new Gallup Poll reporting 65 percent of Democratic voters in favor of Wallace, while Byrnes had but 3 percent, Truman 2 percent. The only other potential candidate with even a modest showing was Alben Barkley, with 17 percent.
It was his intention, Roosevelt said, to send a letter to the chairman of the convention, Senator Samuel Jackson, saying that if he were a delegate he would vote for Wallace. Would he offer any alternative name, Wallace asked. No, Roosevelt assured him, he would not.
The Vice President stood to leave. At fifty-five, he was slim and fit, a man who was regularly out of bed at 5:30 in the morning to play tennis. Yet he had an untidy look, which with his underlying shyness and the shock of reddish-gray hair that hung over the right side of his forehead, made him seem almost rustic, and so entirely different from the seated President.
“Well, I am looking ahead with pleasure to the results of next week no matter what the outcome,” Wallace said.
Roosevelt, his head up, beaming, drew Wallace close and with a vigorous handclasp said, “While I cannot put it just that way in public, I hope it will be the same old team.”
In another exchange earlier that same morning, Roosevelt had told Jimmy Byrnes he was certain Wallace could not win at Chicago, but that he would endorse no candidate other than Wallace. Byrnes pointed out that he had not allowed himself to become seriously interested until Bob Hannegan had told him, in effect, that he was the President’s first choice. On the question of his standing with black voters, Byrnes said only that he didn’t think that would matter, when all was said and done. He showed the President a photograph he had just received from Aiken, South Carolina, in which Mrs. Roosevelt was seen addressing a group of blacks. “Look at the expressions on their faces,” Byrnes said. “That is idolatry. You can’t tell me that because you have a Southerner on the ticket that those people are going to turn against Mrs. Roosevelt and the President who have done more for them than anybody….” Roosevelt said he thought Byrnes was right.
“Mr. President, all I have heard around this White House for the last week is Negro. I wonder if anybody ever thinks about the white people. Did you ever stop to think who would do the most for the Negro. This is a serious problem, but it will have to be solved by the white people of the South….”
He wanted an open convention, Roosevelt said, which Byrnes, understandably, took to mean that he himself had every chance for the nomination. “You are the best qualified man in the whole outfit and you must not get out of
the race,” Roosevelt told him. “If you stay in you are sure to win.”
Meeting with Hannegan and Frank Walker for lunch the next day, Byrnes repeated what Roosevelt had said. Hannegan was incredulous. “I don’t understand it,” he said. Neither did Byrnes, who, determined to settle the matter, returned to his White House office and put through a call to Roosevelt, who by this time was at his home in Hyde Park, New York. Byrnes, who had once been a court stenographer, took down their conversation in shorthand.
Roosevelt said again he was not favoring anybody. “I told them so. No, I am not favoring anybody.”
BYRNES: Bob Hannegan and Frank Walker stated today that if at the convention they were asked about your views, they would be obliged to say to their friends that from your statements they concluded you did not prefer Wallace but did prefer Truman first and Douglas second, and that either would be preferable to me because they would cost the ticket fewer votes than I would.
ROOSEVELT: Jimmy, that is all wrong. That is not what I told them. It is what they told me. When we all went over the list I did not say I preferred anybody or that anybody would cost me votes, but they all agreed that Truman would cost fewer votes than anybody and probably Douglas second. This was the agreement they reached and I had nothing to do with it….
Byrnes pressed him. If Hannegan and his friends were to release any kind of statement saying the President preferred Truman and Douglas, that could make things very difficult for his own cause.
“We have to be damn careful about language,” Roosevelt answered. “They asked if I would object to Truman and Douglas and I said no. That is different from using the word ‘prefer.’ That is not expressing a preference because you know I told you I would have no preference.”
Roosevelt asked Byrnes whether he would try for the nomination. Byrnes said he was considering it, but he needed to know the President’s views. Roosevelt replied, “After all, Jimmy, you are close to me personally and Henry is close to me. I hardly know Truman. Douglas is a poker partner. He is good in a poker game and tells good stories.”
David McCullough Library E-book Box Set Page 451